:) reminds me of my first company - I was still in college and we bid for selling computers and printers to the national railways company.

I negotiated for weeks with IBM and HP.

We made our proposal (sealed envelope type).

We won.

One week later HP faxed the railway company that they retracted our "warranty authorization" (or something like that).

We got disqualified.

Another blessed HP partner was supposed to win and HP solved the issue.

I shut off the company and graduated CS.